‘Mont Blanc: Seen From the Sky’

— Jean-Baptiste Meylan

Oh, those French Alps! Mere words cannot describe their steepness or their scale. You'll have to visit them, in person, to understand why Mont Blanc and its surrounding peaks gave birth to mountaineering, ski touring, and the ski extreme.

Until then, to spark your curiosity here's a collection of aerial photographs of the Mount Blanc region, featuring introductions by Christophe Profit and Roger Frison-Roche.

Browsing through the pages of Mont Blanc: Seem from the Sky, I'm struck by the French Alps' jagged spires, needle-like pinnacles that shoot upward at right angles nearly 13,000 vertical feet above the floor of the Chamonix Valley.

Peaks and spires conspire with knife-blade aretes to make what can only be called one of the Earth's most vertical ranges, a beautiful and deadly wonder of ice and rock.